Category: Discussions

This week, Longreads editors discuss stories in Outside Magazine, Backchannel (WIRED), and The New York Times: Styles.

Catherine Cusick, Kelly Stout, Ethan Chiel, and Aaron Gilbreath discuss stories by Wil S. Hylton, Josephine Livingstone, Jesse Barron, and Rivka Galchen.

This week, we’re discussing stories in The Cut, Vulture, The New York Times, Topic, and The Atavist.

A conversation between writers Eva Holland, Benjamin Percy, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Mary H.K. Choi, and Adam Sternbergh about writing on both sides of the fiction-nonfiction divide.

It’s time to take another look at the definition of activism and where journalism fits in.

How we feel about a person’s privacy seems to correlate with how much control they have in the decision to open up.

Sara Benincasa’s essay “Why Am I So Fat?” was one of our top five reads last week, and with good reason — it was honest and cutting in all the right ways. It was brash and unapologetic and funny as hell (and also suggests that perhaps Fader was slightly premature in declaring, earlier this year, that […]

If there are two things Americans are good at, it’s mishandling our finances, and using Twitter to judge those who are in worse shape than us. Thus we have the perfect Atlantic cover story this week—a refreshingly honest and desparingly relatable personal essay by writer Neal Gabler about his many financial mistakes, as well as […]

I’m quite proud of what this community has accomplished.

A conversation between freelancers Eva Holland, Josh Dean, Jason Fagone, and May Jeong about pitching stories, negotiating contracts, and breaking into a tough industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by how narrative journalism gets commissioned, reported, and published–but the most perplexing part of the entire system is the continued power imbalance between writers and publishers. This imbalance persists in spite of the internet “democratizing” publishing. More digital publishers are embracing feature writing, but the process behind the scenes feels stuck in the past–a time-consuming marathon of […]

Yesterday, we asked for your help, and you responded. Thanks to you, we welcomed 400 new Longreads Members. We’re now at 1,400 members—that’s great progress, but we’re still less than halfway to our goal of 5,000 Longreads Members. We need your help to keep spreading the word. You can share your support on Twitter here. […]